Standing in the shadows of Motown, a nagging question

[Mal C]

So I assume everybody has seen ‘Standing in the shadows’ if you haven’t it’s a fabulous Music Doc, we all love.. and you should pronto...

but.... in the bit where Martha Reeves speaks about Motown moving to the West Coast, surly as an artist she would have been under a more stable contract than the musicians,  in the film she says all of us had no idea...  and I’m not saying she would falsely say that, but Motown would have made artists aware, they would need to know right? 

if anybody can explain because it bugs me every time I watch it...

mal

[Johndelve]

Hello, Mal. 

I'm not sure Motown would have told Martha or any of the artists about the move. When a big corporation thinks of relocating the early stages are as often as not  conducted in secret and its only when it suits the company to let employees know that the news gets 'out there'. Moreover, few of the singers/groups would have welcomed the move and Gordy would have wanted to play his cards close to his chest thus reducing the chances of disaffected acts giving him a hard time. Knowledge is power and Gordy had it all. 

I don't know any of this for a fact, but it seems reasonable to think this is how it played out. 

And, yes, it is a fabulous documentary.

[Kris Holmes]

I heard a version where Martha had been out on tour & the move went down while she was on the road, she came back & called into the offices only to be told operations had shifted west?

[Steve W]

Jack Ashford recalled in his book that the "Funks" turned up for work to be met by a notice on the door stating "no session today". Can you imagine that? I would have thought the major players like The Temps, Diana Ross, would have been in the know, but very few on the production side after that.  Like the previous poster said, Gordy would have kept his cards very close to his chest.

[Tomangoes]

Was the move a success story?

Anybody got any numbers?

Quote:

Legend has it that Motown boarded up its studio in Detroit and left for Los Angeles in 1972. ... The Supremes' Mary Wilson suggests in her memoir Supreme Faith that part of the initial impetus for Motown's big move were the July 1967 riots in Detroit – five years before Hitsville announced it was closing.

ed

[Carty]

13 minutes ago, tomangoes said:

Was the move a success story?

Anybody got any numbers?

Quote:

Legend has it that Motown boarded up its studio in Detroit and left for Los Angeles in 1972. ... The Supremes' Mary Wilson suggests in her memoir Supreme Faith that part of the initial impetus for Motown's big move were the July 1967 riots in Detroit – five years before Hitsville announced it was closing.

ed

I suppose it depends how  success is to be judged , musically in my mind , motown ended then . There must be 100 motown classics made in Detroit  for every one made  on the West coast  . As a corporation , no doubt they did fine , the number of greatest  hits , anthologies etc that kept getting recycled right up to this day , the  real Motown sound  never went West.

[Mickey Finn]

Dennis Coffey says as much in his autobiography.

Considering how eager Gordy was to prevent the Funks from performing on sessions for any other labels in Detroit (those he hadn't already bought up), treating them like that doesn't look so good from this distance. Equally, having bought up most of the competition only to move lock stock and barrel westwards didn't do much for Detroit. And LA didn't do so well for Motown eventually either, although it took time for that to become more obvious - maybe 10 years before the obvious A&R mess of the 80s.